The Mets now have their dynamic pricing guide online on Mets.com. Tickets first went on sale to certain presale codes Monday. I got Opening Day tickets at face value, but just three hours later they were $10 higher. Btw, at 10am today the Mets blogger presale begins. More details here.

This ultimately sucks, although it won’t quite hurt the true fans. Dynamic pricing does not change the prices of packs and plans. If you want a particular promotion or banner day, you have an incentive to buy ahead beyond just getting better seats. As more fans get exciting about specific events, the price will go up. This will have a fairly catastrophic effect on suddenly popular games. Clinchers, Dickey’s first home game after his no-hitter, and late season divisional matchups during pennant races can suddenly become very expensive. Staying ahead of the hype will save you money.

On the flip side, it’s unlikely tickets will plummet that far for unwanted games. The Mets set up an artificial floor so that a fan will never pay less than a season ticket holder paid for that section. Reading between the lines to me means that it’ll never be less than the 10% discount they get. Prices are fairly reasonable for value games as they are, but it’d be nice if the more expensive games become affordable if the Mets are eliminated early or if the weather is supposed to be really bad.

Another interesting use for dynamic pricing is tracking the popularity of games. It can give us insight into tickets sold that previously only the Mets knew. If you want to know how Banner Day is doing for example, you can check out the prices for that game against a similarly valued game and see if it’s inherently more popular or not. As we get a feel for it, we’ll probably be able to tell how close it is to sold out, even within specific sections.

I’ll also be curious to see how the secondary market reacts. Sites like Stub Hub and Seat Crew that deal in second-hand tickets may not be able to keep up with the fluctuations. If a game suddenly takes off in popularity, it will take a while for people to unlist and relist their tickets. If ticket prices drop, the secondary market will suddenly be overpriced. This may also kill day of game sales. If fans really want to go to a game, chances are the prices will increase past the secondary market…unless it’s raining.

Pretty sure season ticket holder price is more like 20% off so there is definitely room for prices to drop.

http://www.ceetar.com/optimisticmetsfan Ceetar

10% for plan holders though right? I don’t think I ever saw a precise answer on what actually constituted the floor.

http://RandomBaseballStuff.com Paul

I wasn’t a big fan of dynamic pricing when the Mets announced it, but for some reason I thought they’d at least have the decency to wait until the public on-sale date for single game tickets before they started jacking up the prices.

http://www.ceetar.com/optimisticmetsfan Ceetar

Yeah, I thought so too, but it’s clearly algorithm driven (and out of the Mets direct control)

Although It doesn’t look like the Promenade seats went up by more than 10-15 before selling out.

Jerry Z

Yes, I find this dynamic pricing interesting to see how in the long run affects us. I assume that as a section’s available seats dwindle the price would then uptick? No? Last 2 years I’ve bought a lot of walk-up tickets due to my schedule, it’s hard to plan way ahead of time on games.